Thursday, February 01, 2007

Food IS a Spiritual thing

I remember working Christmases at Williams Sonoma. We generally had a "waiting list" for the fruitcakes made by Trappist monks at the Assumption Abbey Monastery in the Missouri Ozarks. I'm not one for Fruitcakes, but these were terrific.

Seems they are not alone in bringing in "the dough" by supplying wonderful edible goods.

An Upstate New York order of monks who don't watch TV or listen to the radio will soon be going high-tech to offer their baked goods for sale on the Internet.

Brother Paul Richards says thousands of loaves are baked at the monastery each week for sale in supermarkets in Buffalo, Syracuse, Binghamton and Erie, Pennsylvania.

Monks' Bread fans from outside the region already can place orders using a toll-free phone line. - WCBS TV

To a Trappist, work is a form of prayer. In fact, the cycle of public prayers the monks chant seven times daily is known as the Work of God, or Opus Dei in Latin. Trappists also pray privately at intervals throughout the day, encountering God through the ancient monastic discipline known as lectio divina, or sacred reading.